Re: Constraint checking of actuals passed to Attributes

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <wccln1a5wh8.fsf@world.std.com>,
  Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com> wrote:
> The difference between abnormal and erroneous is pretty small
> abnormal is just one small step short of disaster (where
> erroneous disaster).

Hmmm! It would clearly be absolutely conformant to have
a compiler which when you accessed an abnormal variable
and caused erroneousity which in practice was mild in
effect, and on the other hand where any access to an
uninitialized variable was defined by the implementation
to delete all picture and movie files from your disk,
send messages to all the people on your outlook
list, and send messages about your configuration back
to the Phillipines. As long as this was appropriately
documented (see thread on documentation requirements),
this would be valid behavior.

Trying to categorize levels of disaster is a tricky game :-)

No doubt Bob will protest that the reference to implementation
defined that I am exploiting here was not intend to allow
this *particular* definition, arguing from (reverant music
starts --- O R I G I N A L   I N T E N T).

In practice, I think the important thing is that compilers do
reasonable things, and have several modes corresponding to
various desirable behaviors in terms of undefined behavior.




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